Carcass turns macabre tourist attraction; crowds throng England beach to click selfies with dead whale

The carcass of a humongous 30-tonne fin whale that died on the beach of England’s Bridlington has been removed via an operation by the local council. The cleanup operation, as per the Guardian, has been described as the “largest of its kind” the local council has ever carried out.

As per reports, the massive whale dies after being beached. Videos of its last moments as it struggled to go back into the water have been making the rounds on the internet. All attempts to return it to the sea also failed.

Watch it here:

Talking to ITV, John Bennett, who was one of the first people to see the stranded whale on Tuesday said: “You could see that it was still alive, it was still blowing water out of its hole and you could see the tail flapping. It was obviously in some kind of distress. I found out this morning they weren’t able to save it.”

“You don’t expect to see anything like it, especially in Bridlington. Sad to see it like this but, wow, what a thing to see – it’s amazing,” he added.

Once it died on Tuesday, the fin whale reportedly became a sort of macabre tourist attraction. Bridlington’s South Beach saw a huge number of visitors, many of whom travelled miles just to see the 55 feet (17 metres) whale carcass and click selfies with it. 

To keep crowds away from a police cordon, security staff had to be deployed; it was put in place on Wednesday.

There were also concerns about the body becoming a target of thieves wanting to benefit from illegal trade of the dead mammal’s body parts. 

Whales are protected species and sale, and purchase of their body parts is a lucrative business. In 2020, the jaw bones of a pod of sperm whales that died on the North Yorkshire coast were stolen overnight.

In most cases, the bodies of beached whales get washed away by tides, but on occasions the carcasses have been known to bloat due to decomposition and eventually explode.

To avoid the public safety risk and the theft of the whale’s body parts, East Riding of Yorkshire Council undertook the removal operation. Amid concerns that the carcass will have to be dissected to be removed, the council managed to remove it whole.

Watch | Massive sperm whale dies after beaching itself on Bali beach

As per the Guardian, council workers used diggers with tracks and other heavy lifting equipment to pick up the carcass and moved it to a large flatbed truck for transportation. 

Zoologists are not sure about the whale’s cause of death. It is believed to be a juvenile male fin whale. The mammoth species — second largest animal after blue whales — is found in deeper oceans and is rarely seen in the shallow waters of the North Sea. An autopsy will be carried out to determine the cause of death.